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Prince was always himself, whatever the occasion. Fierce and unapologetic. Reinvention time and again.

He was the soundtrack to our lives since Purple Rain for folks like me. Dance artist. Guitar hero. Pop-music legend.

The only guy who can fire a sound tech at 6 p.m. and have a replacement by 7. (A true account from his second to last Air Canada Centre show.) “I don’t like the way the drums sound.”

Prince tributes go into the night(Reuters)

Whether it was his famous after-show sets that happened in Toronto where the band would play till 3 a.m., or the Massey Hall show that was supposed to happen and created lineups around the building all for naught, the air of mystery was always intact. Not to mention his home on the Bridle Path!

Someone whose production style was and is definitively his. There is no mistaking the first snare beat as soon as When Doves Cry comes bursting out of the speakers.

So few reach such iconic heights in the pop-music world, and so many will try so very hard. Prince’s ascent always seemed effortless.

Nothing compares to Prince.

Brendan Canning is a Toronto musician and a founding member of Broken Social Scene

Brendan Canning is a Toronto musician and a founding member of Broken Social Scene

The generations might not agree on who the real musical heroes are but the principal is the same: if someone is a big part of the soundtrack of your youth, and so the soundtrack of your life, his passing will take a chunk out of you. I was not a Prince fan — and I tend to think that words like “legend” and “icon” get thrown about too easily in this show-biz culture — but I respect the impact he made and left. He was a real musician, unlike so many of the pop poseurs.
And of course, another one gone in what is becoming an especially grim year for these events, reminds some of us that we’re too quickly getting old.